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ELBERT HUBBARD 



A LITTLE JOURNEY 
to the Home of «^ ^ 

By PAUL W. MAVITY ^ ^ 



Published a/i^ Printed iy 

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Franklin, InJiana 



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f^AR 2! !904 

CUiSS ft. Ac. No. 



COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY 
PAUL W. MAVITY. 



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Q But for woman I would have fled the faber and taken 
to trade long ago. Possibly I would still be riding one of 
McCormick's patent carriages, argufying ethics with the 
soulful bronc, pushing lumber on the docks at Green Bay, 
or stirring the saponaceous kettle to the lascivious pleas- 
ings of the gelt. 

Yes, it was a woman made me think. A pretty girl who 
waited on a boarding-house table at Davenport (or was it 
Rock Island?), gave me thrills whenever she passed the 
biscuit, others like her set my blood a-gallop, but it was a 
plain, unpretentious, serious, modest, dignified, gentle and 
honest woman made me think. 

ELBERT HUBBARD. 



m?" 




A LITTLE JOURNEY TO THE HOME OF 
ELBERT HUBBARD BY PAUL W. MAVITY 




HEN AH Baba, the Roy crofter, was 
asked what he considered his greatest 
discovery, he replied, "Elbert Hub- 
bard." 

Stevenson, the well-beloved, said that 
"no man is useless while he has a 
friend", which merely suggests that nei- 
ther Ali Baba nor Elbert Hubbard is 
useless. The friendship between these 
two strong men is as beautiful as a 
white hyacinth. Baba and the Fra are 
as inseparable as were Boswell and Dr. 
Johnson. Baba is known to students 
of the Roy croft catalogue as "The Man 
with the Rake", or he who defies the 
beef trust. If Hubbard ever dies, Baba 
will doubtless become his biographer. 
He knows all the uses of a rake. 
C[ Baba is a lesser Hubbard. He 
bears, indelibly stamped upon his per- 
son, the footprints of the Fra. He ad- 
umbrates the Pastor's genius. The fol- 



ELBERT HUBBARD 



lowing dialogue between the old man Ali and the Fra, as 
recorded by the latter in the famous "Philistine", illus- 
trates the affinity of these two great souls: 

'We are living in hell now as much as we ever shall,' 
says the old man, *and the only way to get out is to 
accept all that comes. Kicking makes the matter worse. 
If you don't take your medicine in this life, a worse 
hell is in store for you the next time, the Devil tells 
me.' 

*What do you know about the Devil?' I asked. 
'Me? Why, I am that man,' was the stern reply. 
With this hint as to the personality of Baba, with the pu- 
pils of our eyes adjusted by so much light, let us now turn 
our gaze squarely and as fearlessly as possible upon the 
dazzling luminary, the subject of our sketch. Let us part 
the curtains: let us gently push down the great, generous 
flowing tie from the classic features and lovingly coax aside 
the victorious tresses from that dominant brow, and behold! 
There, in the light of the dawning twentieth century, is the 
reincarnation of the chiefest of those that Samson slew with 
the jaw-bone of an ass! 




ELBERT HUBBARD 




HE wise guys say with a smile, "Genius 
does not reproduce itself." But let us 
not be too happy about it, since plain 
horse-sense does not always run in fam- 
ilies, either. Genius is likely to bob up 
anywhere; no home is safe from it. 
Q The father of Elbert Hubbard has a 
sound record. At the time of Elbert's birth he was a coun- 
try doctor, so he did not have to buy the infant; genius is 
sometimes cheap. The elder Hubbard was a generous, in- 
dulgent man. Yet he sometimes gave medicine, and thus 
stimulated in the rebellious lad that supreme contempt for 
doctors and the science of therapeutics which is so often 
manifested in his writings. The sons of scientists are often 
fanatics on letting nature take its course. 
The character of Hubbard's mother can be best gauged by 
his statement that she raises flowers to this day. Elbert is 
the chiefest flower of them all. Having raised him, her 
patience in continuing to raise poppies and sich is sublime. 
Hubbard has said that if he had but two loaves of bread he 
would sell one and buy white hyacinths. From this we in- 
fer that his mother docs not raise white hyacinths, else he 
would go to mamma and keep the bread, and maybe help 
himself to a little jam besides. Life is a reaching out for 
your own, says he. 

This happy family first met in Illinois in semi-pioneer 
times, Elbert joining the circle at a date that varies from 
time to time. At fifteen, when he left school, he had a 
pretty tight grip on the handful of things he had learned in 
school, and an infallible knowledge of all that can distradt 
a country bov from his studies. He could hypnotize wild 



ELBERT HUBBARD 



cows so that they would stand, as sweet and amiable as 
you please, while being milked. He learned that a lye is 
used in soft soap, that sheep will follow the bell-wether as 
faithfully as the Philistines of old worshiped their god 
Dagon; by virtue of such experience he has made himself 
dagon admirable to his flock. 

He was a bright, hardy, daring country boy, full of his fav- 
orite "life plus", in whose veins flowed all the ginger of a 
ginger-bread-loving lad. He knew the mysteries of apple- 
butter, pumpkin pie, pickled beef, smoked side-meat and 
cider-barrels, nor was he quite without that touch of self- 
confidence which makes for greatness. He helped support 
the family and hasn't yet forgotten the fact. At fifteen he 
worked on a farm and got only a boy's pay. This so in- 
sulted him that he humiliated his employer by walking 
away toward the west and thus proving that he could take 
the course of empire. He became a cowboy, but deciding 
that he was born for greater things, he wheeled and went to 
Chicago to become a printer. 

As a humble printer he builded better than he knew. 
This work laid the foundation for that knowledge which 
enabled him in after years to employ printers. But while 
working at the case a terrible homesickness seized him, 
which he could not chase away. He longed for the mater- 
nal jam-jar, the soap-kettle — anything homelike. Back 
home he had learned much about soap-making, so he took 
to peddling soap from house to house to establish a tie of 
association. 

In peddling soap he displayed the same genius that he had 
shown in setting type; that is, he soon threw up his job. 
But by the work he laid more of the foundation for great 



ELBERT HUBBARD 5 

things. He lived to evolve a great Soap Idea, which 
cleared him seventy-five thousand dollars. By selling soap 
he also became proficient as an orator, which proficiency 
has cleared him several thousands more. 
There is nothing like having your line of progress well 
soaped. Hubbard has ever had a noble affinity for soap, 
which is rather remarkable in one who has an antipathy for 
barbers. In his creed he says that he wishes to be clean. 
CI Having learned the art of persuasion by selling soap, 
Hubbard took up the occupation of shoving lumber on 
the docks. Thus he learned all about woods and wood- 
working. He learned to make things go, and in later 
years added to this a knowledge of furniture-making which 
enabled him to employ those who can make catalogues that 
go, and fine furniture and things that can go too. It is 
tiresome to shove lumber, so he quit and became a report- 
er. As in those days there was little of interest about 
himself to report, he soon quit and became a traveling 
salesman. 

As a traveling man Hubbard was triumphant. He took 
the Michigan girls by storm. His success is incredible. 
I myself have traveled through Michigan in the attempt to 
find some survivor vain enough to try to describe the effed 
Hubbard produced in that state some twenty-odd years 
ago. Not a soul has ventured to confess any recollection 
of Hubbard for fear the account he would have to give 
would not be believed. Hubbard himself writes so mod- 
estly about this triumph that his account is most unsatisfy- 
ing to his admirers. Yet I venture to quote it, hoping the 
reader's imagination will do the rest. Verily it is one of 
the most pleasing accounts of Mr. Hubbard that I have 



ELBERT HUBBARD 



ever read, and my only regret concerning it is that the poet 
Wordsworth could not have written something like it about 
his own early years as a stanza for his "Intimations of 
Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood." 

I wore a dinky derby, spring-bottom pants, a red 
necktie, a waxed mustache, and a Warm Vest that 
would have made that coat of Joseph seem like the 
silence. I used to have a new vest every trip, and it 
was always a miracle in chromatics. 
But this was nothing to my smile — my smile was con- 
tagious — when I arrived in a place everybody smiled, 
and invited others to smile. The man who deals out 
Red Raven Splits smiled, the 'bus drivers glowed, the 
babies cooed, and the dining-room girls giggled, when 
I came to town. That is what! 

I scattered smiles, lilac-tinted stories, good cheer, and 
silver small change all over the route. 
Especially the stories — 1 always started out with three 
New Ones, and I told 'em from Detroit clear around 
to White Pigeon, and back. And I sold the goods. 
Q I did not merely lay corner-stones and get things 
in shape. I did not secure a promise of an order the 
next time. I did not fix the man for a future trade, 
and then brag about it. 
Not 1. 

1 got his name on the bottom of the order sheet. 
C[ That is what I did. 

And he got the orders. 

That is what he did. 

But the lilac-tinted vests, the lilac-anything stories and the 



ELBERT HUBBARD 



smilax expression of countenance did not satisfy Hubbard's 
aspirations. He quit traveling to become a teacher in a 
distrid school. He soon learned to make two ideas shoot 
where there was only one before: that is, in his own mmd. 
The newly-shot idea was a great gain to him. 
Hubbard is never more complimented than when someone 
addresses him as "teacher". When he calls himself the 
pastor of his flock, he means of course that he is its teach- 
er. Teaching may therefore be said to be his lifework. 
He is wedded to the profession; he recently married a 
teacher by the name of Miss Moore. He has taught many 
of the workers in his shop to teach. "The idea of teach- 
ing", he says, *'we have found is a great benefit — to the 
teacher." No doubt the Pastor developed this principle 
of teaching 'way back in the district school. It is a prin- 
ciple which crops out in a modified form in his declaration 
that "the Kindergarten is the greatest scheme ever devised 
for educating parents." In accordance with this principle 
Elbertus has nurtured his little ones on the Battle Creek 
kindergarten diet and thus acquired a pretty good education, 
which has been supplemented by the great benefit he has 
derived from teaching his flock of good Philistine folk. 
Nothing need be said about the benefit to the pupils in 
either case; that doesn't enter into the principle. 
After his new idea had shot, Hubbard left the district 
school and went to work in a soap fadory. He became 
manager, then partner, evolved a third idea and sold it to 
the concern— "sold out my interest", he says with fine hu- 
mor, "for seventy-five thousand dollars and went to Har- 
vard College." This third idea, the great Soap Idea, was 
a remarkable example of the man's genius. Indeed his 



ELBERT HUBBARD 



brief career in the soap fadory — his rapid rise and his in- 
genuity — is evidence that his gifts were fast maturing. 
He needed only to find himself to do great things. 
CJ At Harvard College he did not find himself. He took 
its discipline (or he didn't) as he had taken his father's 
medicine: rebelliously. The result was that he soon left, 
and ever afterward cherished a contempt for colleges. 
There were no men of genius at Harvard when Hubbard 
was there, or if there were any he failed to discover them. 
The faculty was made up of zealous toilers for the cause of 
systematic education — for the cause of that kind of educa- 
tion which gently blesses some of those whom life does 
not have to teach by first knocking down with a stuffed 
club. Hubbard had little sympathy with the exponents 
of this kind of education; his admiration was for the men 
who have flavored their work with their own individualities. 
So he soon quit Harvard, to say harsh things about college 
professors and to use their labors in search of material for 
his "Little Journeys" and their "scholarly assistance" in 
the preparation of the texts of Roycroft books. 




ELBERT HUBBARD 




LBERT HUBBARD, like the late 
|William Waldorf Astor, had to go a- 
broad to find himself. While tramping 
Ithrough Europe he met William Morris 
and soon discovered that one Hubbard 
was not the greatest man in the world. 
Morris had some self-confidence of his 
own, and was truly a great man. Hubbard, seeing in 
Morris that the age had not gone by when a genius could 
be useful, gained a new purpose in life. He would do 
beautiful and useful work, or at least employ others to do 
it for him, or at the very least write about others who have 
done beautiful and useful work. Returning to America, 
after a few experiments he found his work in the writing of 
"Little Journeys". 

Hubbard had always met failure in his attempts to have 
his writings published. "Editors of magazines refused my 
manuscript", he says, "because they said it was too plain, 
too blunt, sometimes indelicate — it would give offense." 
When, therefore, G. P. Putnam's Sons finally consented to 
publish the "Little Journeys", Hubbard was inflated. He 
wanted to pounce upon the publishers and magazine editors 
who had refused his good stuff. Accordingly he printed a 
little pamphlet on his own hook and called it the "Philis- 
tine". He got up a subscription list, but meant to get out 
only one number. 

The "Philistine" sold. It was saucy, racy, piquant — yes, 
indelicate. Hubbard had struck a vein for which there is 
always a considerable stratum of taste. His genius had at 
last triumphed. The "Little Journeys to the Homes of 
Good Men and Great" sold, too. Hubbard was then a 



ELBERT HUBBARD 



worshiper of genius, and he portrayed the "good men and 
great" in glowing colors, and in a truly fascinating style. 
C( Such was the success of the decent Journeys and of the 
pamphlet of protest that Mr. Hubbard decided he could af- 
ford to buy a printing outfit which his printers offered to 
sell cheap to pay their debts. "I decided to run the * Philis- 
tine Magazine' for a year — ", he naively confesses, "to 
keep faith with the misguided who had subscribed — and 
then quit." 

H. A. Taine has said that there is a morality "for every 
age, race, and sky." Hubbard has recalled Taine by saying 
that morality is largely a matter of geography. Keeping 
faith is sometimes a matter of accident. Had his East Au- 
rora printers not been in debt immediately after his success 
with the first number of the "Philistine", the "misguided 
who had subscribed" might have remained misguided to 
this day. 

"My virtue has never been of so extreme a type as to chal- 
lenge attention", says the Pastor of his flock. 
I was but a boy when I received my first impression of the 
"Philistine". The impression came from my having some 
choice passages read to me, in a barn, by the tough boy of 
the neighborhood. This boy was very careful not to let 
his parents discover the "Philistine" on his person. I wish 
I could forget those choice passages. 

But if Hubbard has the taint, he also has the divine spark. 
He has known William Morris. Ever reverent of genius, 
he has worshiped Morris until he has gathered in some of 
his life. The spirit of Morris, working through Hubbard, 
has built the Roycroft Shop, where beautiful things are 
made. 



ELBERT HUBBARD 



C{ But maybe I am wrong. Hubbard says it was a woman 
who made him think. Perhaps he refers to his first wife. 
If so, there seems to have come a time when she ceased to 
be useful to him as a means of making him think, so he 
renounced his most important obligation to her by break- 
ing his marriage vow and the seventh commandment. 
<J Genius is a law unto itself. Morals is largely a matter 
of climate. The climate of East Aurora is different from 
that of Mount Sinai. 

"There is nothing equal to a man-hunt", says Kitchener, 
and Kitchener is right, says Hubbard; yet he seems to pre- 
fer a woman-hunt and catchin' 'er to the man-hunt of a 
Kitchener. Hubbard has himself been hunted and found 
wanting — yes, wanting more. "My wife is a loaf of brown 
bread," said Elbert one summer evening to his fascinating 
friend Miss Moore, "and when with her I miss something. 
As I am no common loafer, but, in Morris's absence, the 
world's greatest genius, to miss more — it would be a mis- 
take." 

Let us leave these two lovers there in the twilight. There 
are situations too sacred for the gaze of the biographer, 
even for the gaze of a wife. 

The lawyers, however, like to see all that is going on. 
Hubbard savs that all lawyers will go to hell. Be that as 
it may, they are the true modern man-hunters. It is they 
who have hunted down the Pastor of his flock. It was 
through a lawyer that the world discovered that Mr. Hub- 
bard has one young relative who is not mentioned or pic- 
tured in the catalogues, 

Mr. Hubbard would doubtless have acknowledged this 
child, but he had always been too poor to support it. He 



ELBERT HUBBARD la 

had sold all his extra loaves of bread to buy white hya- 
cinths. When brought up in court to pay for the child's 
back board, he said, "I am so poor." Indeed it was posi- 
tively proved that he is worth only a few hundred thousand 
dollars. Yet such is the mockery of the law's alleged jus- 
tice that he was compelled to pay the debt. 
This little episode preceded Hubbard's marriage to Miss 
Moore, the mother of the child that proved such a bore. 
So nobly had the Fra played the father's part that Miss 
Moore was eager to claim him as her own, and now she 
bears the proud name of Hubbard. Mother Hubbard 
No. I has modestly retired, duly divorced. 
The pastor has expressed himself as well pleased with his 
latest wife. 1 guess it was the first one who made him 
think, for this one does the thinking for him. She has 
written a good deal of the "Little Journeys" for several 
years back, and is equal to writing more. This arrange- 
ment beats brown bread all hollow, and for sheer delight 
is equal to white hyacinths. 

Some puritanical and pragmatical persons have criticised 
Hubbard for proving untrue to the woman who first made 
him think, and others have gone so far as to say that he 
should have supported his child in spite of his poverty. 
But such critics are far beneath Elbert's plane of thought. 
The Fra knows that life is a reaching out for what you 
want, that we do things for the exercise, that "love is a 
matter of Wigglers." "As for a life-long happy mar- 
riage — ", he says, "a comradeship between a man and 
woman, Nature never once thought of that — it was the 
necessities of civilization brought it about." In his creed 
he says, "If I can help people, I will do it by giving them 



ELBERT HUBBARD 13 

a chance to help themselves." He merely gave his child a 
chance to help itself by any means it could. 
Amongst the brilliant achievements of this great genius, 
none is more brilliant than his pamphlet entitled "A Mes- 
sage to Garcia". This message, the work of an hour, voices 
a great truth. In only fifteen hundred words it says. When 
there is something to be done, go right ahead and do it. 
Now there are times when every employer has just this to 
say to his employes, and it is very convenient to have it in 
print. In this commercial age, every employer wants his 
employes to work. So the convenient pamphlet was 
bought by employers all over the world and presented to 
jaded workers. This brought the author much fame and 
monies. 

Hubbard has written several very interesting books, "Time 
and Chance" being his strongest. His "Little Journeys", 
though subject to historical inaccuracies, are highly enter- 
taining, and often give the reader a wholesome desire to 
know the whole life and work of those whom Hubbard 
pats on the back. The "Philistine", which has gradually 
grown decent through the years, is full of pleasant reading; 
of much of the philosophy and observation of Emerson, 
Amiel, Taine, Montaigne and others; and of no small meas- 
ure of the personality of one Elbert Hubbard. His lect- 
ures are delightful. But it is his Shop that constitutes the 
noblest produd of his genius. The Roycroft Shop is to 
me an inspiring prophecy, an industrial achievement wor- 
thy to be an example for the whole world. 
The plan of the Roycroft Shop is familiar to most persons 
in this country, as Mr. Hubbard has been lecturing upon 
this subjed for some time and has also presented it briefly 



ELBERT HUBBARD 



through the "Cosmopolitan Magazine" and the catalogue 
of the Roycrofters. To me the material produds of this 
shop — the book-bindings, the furniture, the rag carpets — 
are of far less interest and significance than is the result of 
the "Roycroft idea" upon the characters of the employes, 
and secondarily upon the public. I mean not that one 
should love art less, but that he should love character 
more. As art, the work of the Roycrofters is surpassed 
by many modester shops in this country, yet it is very 
thorough and sensible work, and the ingenuity of the claims 
sometimes made for it is compensated for by the success of 
the Roycrofters as pioneers in the transplanting of the 
ideals of William Morris. The Roycroft art is not as bar- 
ren as some artists, possibly a bit jealous, would have us 
believe; but on the other hand much of it falls far short of 
the comparative beauty that credulous laymen imagine it 
possesses. It is not, nor is any art, of sufficient beauty at 
once to embody and to prove a complete ideal of life. 
Can we, then, find the solution of life in the Roycroft idea 
regarded as an industrial experiment? Mr. Hubbard pos- 
sesses a marvelous genius for supplying the social needs of 
his employes and making them happy in their work; he has 
the most charming and childlike impulse of kindness 
toward such of his companions as make little demands upon 
his heroism; he has a high ideal of thoroughness in art and 
business, and he lives up to it; by virtue of this much he 
has solved some serious industrial problems. But the com- 
plete ideal of life is still symbolized by the cross, and not 
by the Roycroft trademark. There is no easy road to 
blessedness, even for genius, and it is right good for our 
manhood that there is not. 



ELBERT HUBBARD 



5 




ROM what I have thus far written, the 
reader has not guessed that I love El- 
bert Hubbard. Seriously, I truly love 
the man. My regard for him is some- 
what like that of David Copperfield for 
Steerforth even after David knew that 
his handsome friend had seduced Emily. 
If one Taine, historian of English literature, had not been 
my bad angel, Hubbard might have been. He has every 
quality that can fascinate a lonesome boy or girl. He has 
come to some of us youths, and to many an elder but no 
wiser soul, as a vitalizing and responsive and seemingly 
candid companion. He has possessed for us all the at- 
tractions of a man of superb health, of a lover of life, of a 
joyous and exuberant pagan mellowed by the ancestral 
hardships of centuries. Reading between the lines of his 
writings, we have pictured him as beautiful, eloquent, 
happy, successful. We have believed that he has a great 
mission: to inspire others with a love of the beautiful and a 
joy in work. We have accepted his indelicacies as Cole- 
ridge accepted Shakespeare's. We have accepted his play- 
ful expressions of egotism and vanity as the humor of ex- 
travagance, as the laughing down of criticism by burlesque 
of his own alleged faults; and we have accepted the serious 
expressions of his conceit as almost warranted. Looking 
in his writings in vain for a definite moral stand upon cer- 
tain phases of life, we have feared for him, but we have 
trusted that his professed ideal of kindness would save him 
from a breach of duty or honor. When, therefore, we 
awoke one morning to find that he had long ago fallen, 
that he had relinquished constancy for passion, the love of 



ELBERT HUBBARD i6 

wedlock for adultery, candor for secrecy, parental duty for 
selfishness, — we were sick about the heart, miserably sore 
and disappointed. Here and there young country girls, 
members of the Christian Endeavor or of the Epworth 
League, cried in secret and hoped it was not true after all, 
while yet fearing the "I told you so" of their parents. 
Everywhere pretty and accomplished women, thoughtful 
of their reputations, began to regret their former loyalty, 
against all masculine opposition, to the Fra. Men of the 
world chuckled in sclf-satisfadion that they had long ago 
credited Hubbard with just such a charader. 
Elbert Hubbard has spoken with the tongues of men and 
of angels; but having not purity, he cannot have charity, 
and is but as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 
C[ I am inclined to think that at bottom Mr. Hubbard's 
taint is not so much impurity as genius-worship. He has 
so worshiped the world's men of genius that he has imitated 
even their weaknesses and their license. With all due re- 
sped: for genius, I believe that genius-worship is one of 
the curses. In the schools, children are taught to reverence 
men like Burns and Byron and Poe and to soak up their 
ideas. Biographies are written to cast a glamour over the 
lives of these great, unhappy failures. Burns tried to make 
low vice jolly, and died miserable; Byron rebelled against 
moral law until he became almost insane with the fruitless 
struggle; Poe made his art his ruling passion, without hav- 
ing enough good to give to the world to warrant it, and so 
his life was full of despair. The works of such men as 
these are the records of practical and moral failure. Such 
geniuses are bad models. Their influence is unwholesome. 
To be able to give a perfect record of failure is sometimes 



ELBERT HUBBARD 17 

the one talent of what we call genius. A school-boy said 
to me once, "Poe's * Raven' is my skull-and-crossbones." 
Would that Burns and Byron had left more skulls behind. 
Pray God that Hubbard will not negleft to leave behind 
the skull-and-crossbones of the skeleton in the closet. An 
honest skull is better than a beautiful illusion every time. 
Hubbard has been wrapped in illusion. He has been 
dream-beguiled. He has yet to learn that modern society 
is in its general scheme Christian, and that to be below the 
general standard of society is to degenerate, and finally to 
despair. 




Q HERE ENDETH A LITTLE JOURNEY TO 
THE HOME OF ELBERT HUBBARD, AS 
WRITTEN BY PAUL MAVITY. THE INI- 
TIALS AND ORNAMENTS WERE DESIGNED 
BY W. R. VORIS, THE WHOLE BEING LAID 
OUT AND PRINTED AT THE WESTMIN- 
STER PRESS, WHICH IS IN FRANKLIN, IND- 
IANA, U. S. A. ANNO CHRISTI, MCMIV. v< 



